


1625

by lynndyre



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Beginnings, Canonical Minor Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 18:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1827352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Over the year, Treville buries twenty of his regiment and begins to rebuild it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1625

**Author's Note:**

  * For [one_flying_ace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/one_flying_ace/gifts).



It was in late January of 1625 when the king ordered information leaked on the training mission which the Musketeers had undertaken near the border of Savoy. It was February before Treville brought the dead back to Paris, piled one upon the other in a covered wagon, so they might at least rest with their brothers in the graveyard, in consecrated ground. 

The bodies were frozen, and Treville was grateful for the winter’s biting chill, if only to keep them that way.

Also returned to Paris, under Treville’s hand, was the single un-deserted survivor, who started at the sound of gunfire, and leaned into his Captain’s touch as though he needed it to stay grounded to the earth. 

The king ordered a mass said for the Musketeers who had fallen, and Treville thanked him without meeting his eyes. The exalted music, and thin winter light coming down in shining colours through the stained glass did little to cleanse his recollection of brown on white on pale, of churned snow and long-dried blood. Of his men’s faces. 

Aramis, though, was eased by it. Treville watched the tension leaving him as the mass progressed, watched his face smooth, his shoulders lower, his head lift as though he could hear the word of God, while Treville hears only the voice of Armand Jean du Plessis, cardinal-duc de Richelieu.

The others who remain of Treville’s denuded company stand straight under the stained light, Gilles marked in red and yellow, Baptiste’s face shadowed in blue. Henri is crying, but gently now, not the awful sobbing Treville must pretend not to hear through the garrison walls. Aramis’s eyes are closed, and his lips move following the prayer.

This mass, ordered by the same hand that ordered their deaths, spoken by the voice that spoke their location, attended by Treville himself, who gave them over to king and country and death... and yet for all that, Treville could see the King’s sorrow, too. And Armand, voice raised in Latin, met Treville’s eye with something almost like sincerity. 

Treville breathed out, and shut his eyes, and bowed his head. And, slowly, felt a little of the healing grace God was granting his remaining men.

In the days that followed, Treville surveyed the empty garrison yard, and began to plan for the future of the regiment. The whole company would need to be built up again, and stronger. The Musketeers would be good enough to survive whatever King and country and Treville himself demanded of them.

The first new man in the garrison was not a Musketeer at all, but an old campaigner called Serge, replacing Duval, the cook, who had been at Savoy. Treville liked the man, and he had years of service attesting his loyalty, and bridging his welcome among the men. His stews were better than Duval’s. His pottage was worse. Treville overheard him and Aramis and Mantel remembering the siege of Montauban, in ‘21. 

Choosing new Musketeers was more difficult, though the ranks of soldiers offered many of great ability. There were trials, of swordsmanship, of shooting, both with pistol and musket, and of unarmed combat. The king commissioned new Musketeers: Bayard, Luc du Montain, Phillipe of Landes, others. By now it was approaching spring.

In late March General de Tournay brought his soldiers back to the city, ready to retire, and allow the king to name and appoint his successor. De Tournay was one Treville had known and trusted since before the days of Marie de Medici’s attempted coup, and though he was broader with the years, and greyer, he was still full of vigour.

“Are you still looking for men, Treville? Come and meet someone, I think he would do well for you.”

From the shadows of the practice yard, they watched the sparring. Treville did not need to ask which man de Tournay meant. He was huge and dark and fought as though born to it – but more than that, he fought as though he took joy in it. Not conquering, sneering pride, but honest pleasure at the contest. There is something in the spirit of it that reminds Treville of a different joy, when Aramis’ world narrows to only his musket and his target, and every shot strikes the center.

“Four years I’ve had him, and if I weren’t to retire, I’d keep him. He’s worked harder and come farther than any soldier I know, and he’ll go farther yet.”

In the yard, the man grins, patting his defeated sparring partner on the back hard enough to make him stumble, and both of them laugh.

Treville’s garrison has held little enough laughter, these past weeks.

“What is his name?”

Porthos du Vallon settled into the life of a Musketeer as though it was the culmination of everything God had put him on earth to do. Aramis only was slow to warm to him, and Treville saw the echoes of his desperation in the forest of Savoy, that none be left behind, none replaced. Yet Aramis was easier with the other new recruits than he was with Porthos, and Treville suspected he resented the happiness Porthos exuded so easily. Aramis’ spirit was still wintered, even as spring brightened and blossomed into summer.

In early June, the forget-me-nots bloomed thickly in their last days. Far outside the city a man threatened his brother’s wife, unearthed her lies and deeds, and died for it. Her husband-lord ordered her judgment, in his last act before abandoning home and lands and happiness to guilt and grief and the embrace of oblivion.

As the summer heat rose, the flowers died, and Olivier no longer de la Fere came to Paris.

Also with the heat came Armand’s decision that he’d allowed Treville enough grace, and his Red Guards set about ensuring the new Musketeers were aware of the appropriate levels of rivalry and cordial loathing to be accorded one another. The illegality of dueling prevented precisely none of the duels that followed.

Phillipe was cornered alone by three of the Cardinal’s men outside the Green Bottle, in a fight that would have gone ill had not one of the patrons tripped one Guard into the gutter and forced another’s head into the water barrel. Phillipe bought his rescuer a drink, and in the morning introduced him to his captain.

And so as summer lingered in yellow light, and the breezes blew cool with the promise of autumn, Captain Treville’s Musketeers fell into formation to hear their mission for the September campaign against the Hugenot control of the Isle del Re. At the forefront, between Porthos and Aramis, the new man, Athos, stood utterly centered and at his ease. 

And Treville ordered his men forth.


End file.
